Silas Told was born in Bristol in 1711. He was educated for free at Colston’s School as a charity pupil.
At the age of 14, he was apprenticed to be a sailor.

He suffered beatings and abuse along with short rations on board the ship The Prince of Wales under his master Captain Moses Lilly.
He later suffered even more under slave captain Timothy Tucker. Told could read and write; unlike most sailors of his day. This time he kept a diary of his ordeal.

On his return to England, he became a Methodist, converted to the religion by John Wesley, a Bristol preacher.

Shortly after his death, his book The Life and Dealings of God with Silas Told was published in 1786 by his Methodist friends; to spread the story of his conversion to the religion and to show the cruelties of the slave trade, which many religious people were against.
The book shows the terrible suffering that the sailors, as well as those enslaved on board, could experience at the hands of the officers and captains.

John Wesley was the founder of the Methodist Church. He was an Abolitionist and a preacher, who wrote and preached against the slave trade.